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Picking up on the biological metaphor of "When I think of free software programmers, I think of the so-called birds of paradise -- each indulging in its uncommon, seemingly gratuitous display of beauty and grace simply because it is possible,"

Programmers are like musicians playing to their flowers. Free software ones are those who enjoy playing for other musicians.

Programmers are like second language speakers of languages spoken natively only by the computers themselves. Free software programmers ch

I do not find your native speakers of programming languages standoffish [perl.org]; rather, I find computers pathetically compliant and more than a little frail. Computer programs, on the other hand, are the codification of programmers' understanding of how to solve certain problems using a computer, and I do find many computer programs infuriatingly standoffish.

Now, I can see how, if one chooses a biological metaphor, one may construe the computer as a standoffish creature made up of hardware and so

Unlike the Java programmers to which you allude [perl.org], many of whom are salaried corporate employees who are content to cut-and-paste their life away in the safety of their hive or colony, Perl hackers are often self-employed consultants who insist on the validity of increasingly exotic concerns like, oh, the well-being of other people.

Indeed, much of the talk in the Perl habitat (freedom, plurality, responsibility, quality, etcetera) is, IMHO, about the well-being of people. I'm afraid you don't find that ve